News and notes from around the interweb:
- My take on the 4 best no annual fee cards for travel over at USA Today Travel.
- I don’t see any features that make my life better or more productive. On the other hand this is what the Internet of Things will really look like. (HT for the latter to Marginal Revolution)
- I’m glad that Spirit Airlines exists, I think they fill a great market niche. You can get a fantastic deal on no frills travel and even buying up to their Big Front Seat can be cheaper than coach on other carriers. To me it’s bad enough they don’t support TSA PreCheck. The biggest issue is the lack of redundancy and route network that means if you run into flight problems (and you may – half their flights were delayed last month) you’re often on your own if you need alternative travel arragements that day.
However not everyone agrees with me. This contrary take says I am wrong about Spirit for the average passenger. That’s probably true, I explained my reasons for not flying them — and didn’t say you shouldn’t.
In case you didn’t get it (B)est (P)rotection stands for BP, after the oil spill. At least they didn’t offer ‘a flood of low fares’ to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina - Last day to buy American miles for 2.14 cents apiece.
- Several years ago I wrote that Google could become your next travel agent. Well, you can now book some hotels from within search and maps.
- Airport directors and their lobbyists descend on Washington next Monday and Tuesday. Watch your wallets.
- Some is threatening restaurants with bad Yelp reviews in order to extra refunds even though he didn’t eat there.
Gary, if you read the comments on the post, IFTTT seems to be an early connection people are using to make Amazon Echo productive. Still some time to develop, but it’s saving me time, something I don’t have enough of.
Fantastic IoT article. I do IoT strategy for a living, and that’s one of the better future casting pieces I’ve read. On the money. Thanks for sharing.